In a move that has sent shockwaves through Belgium’s cultural landscape, the Flanders region is seeking to dismantle the country’s oldest contemporary art museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) in Antwerp. The cost-cutting plan, which would see the museum’s entire collection of 8,000 artworks transferred to the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak) in Ghent, has been met with widespread outcry from the artistic community.
At a press conference held in Antwerp on Tuesday, the museum’s directors decried the “flagrant illegalities” of the proposed restructuring, which is set to be debated in the Flemish parliament on Friday. Prominent Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, widely regarded as the country’s most influential living artist, described the move as “simply insane,” arguing that “you cannot simply take a collection of artworks and transplant it into another ecosystem, because such an ecosystem does not exist.”
The Antwerp museum’s collection includes works by international artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor, and Marina Abramović. Kapoor himself has protested the plan, telling the culture ministry in an email seen by The Guardian that he “cannot accept that they might be removed from M HKA or otherwise put at risk as part of any institutional reorganisation.”
The cost-cutting measures come as Belgium faces a budget deficit of 5.4% of GDP, one of the largest in the Eurozone. The arts sector, in particular, is facing dramatic cuts, with austerity measures also threatening the future of Brussels’ new Kanal museum, originally designated to become one of Europe’s largest new arts complexes.
While the Flanders region has a plethora of contemporary art museums, including Smak in Ghent and Mu.ZEE in Bruges, the proposed restructuring has been questioned by Belgium’s financial inspectorate. In a memo sent to the culture minister in October, the inspectorate suggested that the impact on the budget would be “fragmentary,” with the potential savings from the move offset by the need to borrow works or buy in exhibitions to attract visitors to the Antwerp institution in the future.
As the debate over the future of M HKA continues, the artistic community in Belgium and beyond has rallied to defend the museum’s legacy and the integrity of its collection. The outcome of the Flemish parliament’s deliberations on Friday will have far-reaching implications for the country’s cultural landscape.